Selected to attend the Governor’s Conference on Clean Water held in August at St Louis.
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The Gallatin R-5 Stream Team and advisor Dennis Steigerwalt, along with other stream teams in the state, were selected to attend the Governor’s Conference on Clean Water held in August at St Louis.
Gallatin was selected because their high school stream team had
turned in the most data and the most diverse activities.
Representatives from each of the four top teams also represented Missouri at the Youth Watershed Summit in Maryland in October.
Brady Feigly, son of Doug and Lisa Feigly, was selected by Mr. Steigerwalt to be the student delegate due to his activity in Stream Team, Envirothon, Science Olympiad, and having taken the summer stream team class.
Heather Berry, daughter of Allen and Cynthia Berry, was able to attend as a substitute for a member of the fourth top team. She was selected because of her activity in stream team and testing water quality at the school pond almost every Wednesday after school.
Mr. Steigerwalt was the teacher delegate of Missouri selected to attend the summit in Maryland. Others attending were Cody Nickels and teacher Dan Hatch of Raymondville; and Jessica Salsig and teacher Kim Fields of Marshfield. Priscilla Stotts was the Stream Team coordinator with the Water Pollution Control Program of the Department of Natural Resources.
Prior to the summit in October, the group was to work on a local watershed problem in their area to present at the summit project fair. Brady and Heather did their project on agricultural practices that affect the Grand River in northwest Missouri.
The America’s Clean Water Foundation and Smithsonian Environmental Research Center (SERC) organized, provided and paid for tansportation, accommodations, and meals for the delegates at the summit. Roberta Savage, president of America’s Clean Water
Foundation, and Mark Haddon, educational director of SERC, were the organizers of this summit involving over 300 students and teachers.
The students participated in a watershed rotation of four stations to carry out experiments and investigation.
The “Estuarine Ecology/Research and Monitoring” rotation involved the students collecting data on aquatic organisms along Muddy Creek and into the Chesapeake Bay. The students helped collect the organisms from the nets, which included many sardine fish, blue crabs, small squid, hog chokers, flounders, jellyfish, and many more things that Missourians had never seen before.
The students then made measurements and recorded numbers and length of the organisms, before returning them to the water.
The “Geographic Information System (GIS) Lab/Shoreline Biology” rotation had two parts. The first part had the students using the computer program “Arc View” which uses satellite imagery to locate information about the watershed. The second part was helping
bring in a drag net to study the organisms along the shoreline.
Small crabs and sea anemones found in oyster shells were studied. A presentation by researchers explained how aquatic organisms like blue crabs were tracked with metal inserts and radio telemetry.
Our third rotation was “Forest Ecology and Canopy Studies.” In this rotation students were given a presentation by a local Maryland forester on how to evaluate a forest stand.
They did tree identification and measurements using clinometers and 10-degree angle prisms to record information about the forest. The highlight was the study of the forest canopy, a new field in forestry.
The last rotation was the “Muddy Creek Canoe Trip/Wetland Ecology.” Students took canoes up Muddy Creek for information on the ecology and research being done.
A Project Fair was set up to display the watershed projects from each state. The State of Maine’s team won first place. Their project not only identified a problem, but designed and implemented a solution.
Each state recorded a “Radio Spot” of one minute in length that summarized their watershed project and also a page of information, pictures and Internet links. The information can be found at:
http://www.serc.si.edu/education/youthwatershedsummit/.
It also contains links to other areas and some pictures from the summit. Students visited the National Aquarium in Baltimore and were given a special program called “Dessert with the Dolphins.” They also went to the capital building in Washington, DC. where Missouri Senator Kit Bond gave a presentation.
They attended the Smithsonian building of Natural History with presentations from national executive agencies including Christine Todd Whitman of the USEPA, Thomas Christensen of the USDA, Bob Hirsh of the USGS, Major General Hans Van Winkle of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and Vice Admiral Conrad C. Lautenbacher, Jr., U.S. Navy of NOAA.
Many other sites around the area were viewed.
After returning home, the other 19 Gallatin Stream Team students joined Brady and Heather and Mr. Steigerwalt at the water study site on the Grand River near Jameson.
They ran water quality tests with the test kits they had received at the summit.